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A Prairie Home Contrarian

Leave it to Garrison Keillor to perfectly crystallize the circus show that has engulfed the Grand Old Party since the Repulsive Nincompoop Convention opened its snake-oil shop in early September. Among Mr. Keillor's nuggets of nourishing wisdom, coated in a deliciously sugary shell as always: reducing the Republican ploy of reform to a Bugs Bunny-type dupe ("The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, 'Throw the bums out!'"); likening the group-think masses at the RNC to small-minded high school cliques ("farm kids, jocks, the townies who ran the student council, the cheerleaders, some of the bullies  and they are as cohesive now as they were back then, dedicated to school spirit, intolerant of outsiders, able to jump up and down and holler for something they don't actually believe"); and detailing his own inspired plans for self-reinvention ("if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis"). God bless you, Louie, and your fleur-de-lis hankies, too.